Archive for January 27, 2010

27

I just finished looking at a couple of live blogs on Apple’s big iPad event, flipping back and forth between Macworld and Ubergizmo’s coverage.

While initial reaction has been all over the map, mine is overwhelmingly positive. I think they hit a grand slam.

Here’s why:

1. There are lots of reasons why a tablet is a better mobile device than a laptop or a netbook.
2. The price is right (Starts at $499, goes to $829)
3. The data plans are right (Wifi, 3G $14.95 to $29.95 for data plan

26

Given over 100,000 apps in the store from a wide variety of developers (from amateurs to experts) and a wide variety of topics, that’s actually pretty good. Apple claims that most rejections are actually for bugs in code, which makes sense given the wide disparity in development quality and test coverage.*

* For example, are you testing your software for ipod touch as well? You should – applications have been rejected for

26

Macworld’s Coverage of Apple’s Quarterly Results and Finance Call had some interesting news on continued enterprise iPhone adoption:

The iPhone is ranked #1 in customer satisfaction in J.D. Powers’ survey.
Corporate clients have doubled.
70% of Fortune 100 are actively piloting or deploying iPhone. About 50% of FT 100 are doing the same.

Not bad given that Apple has only been in this business for 2.5 years.

This certainly jibes with a lot of what we are seeing from our customers, that the iPhone is the first choice for mobile application development and

25

This morning I sat through two pitches by two startups looking for funding. I won’t get into the details, but they both had clever ideas at their root. But while one company was attractive and poised for success, the other was mediocre and not getting much traction. Why was that? They both had clever ideas, no?

Over the years I’ve looked at a lot of business plans for Venture Funds. The first lesson that I learned was that cool ideas didn’t equal successful companies. While I would get

15

Academic research is incredibly inefficient when it comes to producing products and services. Grad students, post-docs and professors work on “problems” that some collection of graybeards has deemed “interesting.” Their “solutions” — sometimes successful, sometimes not — are published as research and then, occasionally, if the stars align, is turned into a product or service through the application of venture capital via a startup.

The only thing less efficient in producing innovative products and service is the corporate R&D department. In most places you have a phase-gate process (waterfall under

14

As an answer to those asking why we need a tablet anyway, there’s a very funny set of pictures and comments at WTF Is Wrong with Laptop Users in the Media. The author went through the first 400 images (out of 28,886) he got on a search at Getty Images of “Using a laptop” and compiled the highlights. My favorites:

Now ask yourself, in which of those pictures would (a sealed, always on, always connected) tablet make more sense?

12

I often meet peers who ask what Agile practices Pathfinder utilizes. From the outside we pretty much use all of XP’s practices. However, if you take a deeper look we do some things a little differently (especially how to use and calculate velocity). For Agile purists, one might question if we are really doing Agile. They would claim changing practices is slippery slope. For example, a team will start altering Agile practices to create a “home grown” version only to find they are using only

12

… it’s hard not to think about how much easier some people’s lives would be (hi Mom and Dad) if they could trade technical complexities they don’t care about for vastly increased simplicity and ease of use.

– John Siracusa, ars technica

My parents were technically savvy enough (with a little help from their sons) to start using Skype video in their mid seventies, prompted by the arrival of grandkids halfway across the country. But for them, it was always a cumbersome affair:

11

I’ve made my fair share of predictions, and this may seem to be a layup, but I think it’s a prediction worth making anyway: mobile devices and applications will transform business and every day life in the next decade.

Why does this seem like such a layup? Well, look at the iPhone and the ecosystem of applications and companies springing up around it. Android and Blackberry are trying to jump in on the business and everybody and their brother is cooking up a connected mobile device. And yes,